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Black and White Accountant
Riley Maccracken Introduction For the most part people think of accountants are boring back of the office people but that can only bring bad news. That’s only half true; accountants are necessary for the world even if people think there just like Kevin Malone from the American version of the office. They keep the whole office going, they make sure the companies not going to go bankrupt or make sure all the taxes are properly filed each year. An accountants writing is not long proposals of company plans for the future or long scientific essays to try and proof a theory. It’s straight to the point; it’s tax returns, financial reports for the year and financial outlooks for the future of a company or a home. As an accountant you need to be up to date on new tax laws and have the right idea of all the money flow in a portfolio. It all comes down to staying on top of things, there’s a difference in a professional accountant with a CPA doing your taxes compared to TurboTax or other do it yourself options. 7 Most Common Tax Mistakes CNNMoney On CNN’s money page they often give useful tips on how to safe your money or helpful ways to invest your money. There was an article on a couple days ago called 7 Most Common Tax Mistakes, about helpful tips on how to do your own taxes. It went into basic mistakes people make when filing their taxes such as forgetting to sign jointly with your spouse, writing in the wrong social security number and mistakenly filling in deductions or claiming credit when your not supposed to. All of this is helpful for the person trying to safe a few bucks by trying doing their taxes alone. But it doesn’t go into enough detail to accurately do as good of job as a real accountant would do. This article covers the very basics that would help somebody double check their work. What this article doesn’t cover is the harder questions about what you can claim as a dependent or what money you need to report to your taxes. These are important because it can affect how much money you get back on your taxes. http://money.cnn.com/gallery/pf/taxes/2014/04/08/tax-mistakes/index.html?iid=SF_PF_Lead A Day In The Life Of A Public Accountant By Amy Fontinelle A more in detail article written by Amy Fontinelle called ''A Day In The Life of A Public '' ''Accountant; ''this article goes into an accountant’s daily task and what his jobs throughout the year are. This article covers interviews of two different accountants and is in more depth about what there actually doing with their client’s money. It goes into activities that “include downloading monthly bank and broker statements, reviewing capital transactions, calculating management or performance fees and performing reconciliations of net asset value, “ (Fontinelle). You can see from just the vocabulary that not everybody can come off the street and pickup some software and do it at home. A CPA (Certified Public Accountant) is required for accounting jobs; it proofs creditability and helps people recognize whom they can trust. http://www.investopedia.com/articles/professionals/052813/day-life-public-accountant.asp All In The Details The difference between these articles is in the details; one you can buy software for and do it you, the other takes years of college experience and degrees. In the first article written on CNN.com covers the very basics of checks that you can go over to make sure there were not mistakes that a non-accountant could correct. Things such as simple math errors or writing things in the wrong place are covered. The article also has pictures and short simple paragraphs. This is because people who are reading online often don’t want to read long boring paragraphs of something, they want quick, short statements that they can scan and move on to the next thing. That’s why CNN puts out articles such as this there trying to attract an audience to their site; they’re not trying to proof something new. In the second article written by Fontinelle it talks about to accounts daily task that need to cover. “Melancon typically works from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday, except during tax season when he also works Saturdays. But as a business owner and someone who has reached an advanced level in his field, each day is different,” (Fontinelle). Richard Melacon was describing his daily schedule, he processes payroll, prepares sales tax returns, performs book keeping services and closes activates for hedge fund clients. Again everything falls back to the details, the differences between what years of study in the accounting field will give you. Whose The Audience Another common misconception is that both of these articles are written for the same reason. The one from CNN was written more for the entertainment purpose of reading; it has quick little paragraphs meant for consuming quick facts. It also includes pictures and is in slideshow format making the reader interact more, keeping their attention. The article written by Fontinelle is a scholarly article written for peers in her field of accounting. It goes into detail about people she interviewed daily task and what position they have in their company. It also includes people’s careers paths and how they got be where they are today. Amy Zhang is a CPA for Affinity Fund Services where she is the managing member, but she didn’t start off like that, “Zhang holds both a bachelor's degree and a master's degree in accounting. Earlier in her career, she worked for 10 years as an auditor and accountant for two companies,” (Fontinelle). Zhang’s career path took years she did not get to be the head of a company right after college, that’s the difference between quick tips and professional accountants. That’s also the difference between articles written in the accounting field and articles written for entertainment purposes. Category:Business